The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

F1 mysteries of the year ahead…

I love France’s odd village names. Just as I have a great affection for England’s quaint Zeal Monachorum, Kirkby Overblow, Upton Snodsbury, Ryme Intrinseca, Sandy Balls, Batchelor’s Bump, Nether Wallop, Barton in the Beans, Scratchy Bottom and all the rest of them, I love places in France with wildly odd names like Pontfaverger-Moronvilliers, Saint-Arnac (which roughly translates as “Holy Swindle”), Monteton, where my son was christened, which translates as “my nipple”. There is also Corps-Nuds (Naked Bodies) in Brittany, and La Machine, which is quite a big town not far from Magny-Cours.

One other particular favourite is the hamlet of La Dynamite, not far from Arles.

Why am I waxing lyrical about all of this? Well, because I was thinking about the way in which time marches inexorably onwards and there is rarely a moment to stand still. It seems like only yesterday that we were in Abu Dhabi and now Christmas is almost upon us. As I was thinking about this I remembered my absolute favourite French village, not far from here, which is called La Roue Qui Tourne”, which means “the turning wheel”.

Outside the sun is bright on thick, thick snow and the people of rural France are now busying themselves in preparation for Christmas, and the rest of the holiday season. I am hunkered down in the Saward Bunker, finishing the last GP+ of the year. I would prefer to be making some nice onion soup, but I find myself chained to the computer. They tell me that the region is in chaos after the heaviest snowfall in many years and I am happy to be somewhere warm. Life is not so bad with a fire in the hearth and a Whisky Mac (a rare commodity given the ease with which one can find Stone’s Ginger Wine down at the alimentation générale…)

In my spare moments I have been pondering some of the questions that remain about the season ahead. There is, of course, the Lotus mess which will need to be sorted out. I am sure that will keep us busy for weeks to come. Readers already know my views on this subject. I am curious to know whether or not Luca di Montezemolo is going to leap into Italian politics, and equally keen to know what will happen at Ferrari if he does. McLaren seems to be in fairly good shape at the moment, despite an email glitch in the last 24 hours which has showered all those on the team’s media lists with hundreds of unwanted emails. C’est la vie. Red Bull Racing seems to be hard at work, aiming to repeat its successes of 2010 next year. Mercedes is hard at it as well, although I am curious to know whether there will be changes in the structure of the team if Mercedes-Benz gets a new chief executive officer, as has been rumoured for some time. I am also curious to see whether Volkswagen-Porsche will decide to enter F1 and who they will decide to ally with. Red Bull Racing has been cuddling up to Renault a lot of late and so I would see Williams as a more likely option for the folks in Wolfsburg. I am watching Force India to see what they do about drivers as they have far too many supermen trying to get into the same telephone box. I am also interested to see whether all the departures of engineers will affect the team’s performance next year. Sauber is also a source of interest because there is clearly not enough money in the pot at the moment for 2011, despite the team’s deal with Telmex. This might be a good opportunity for an enterprising sponsor to pick up a really good deal, as the car was not bad at all by the end of the season and next year should see a step forward – and Kamui Kobayashi has been a revelation this year, particularly when it comes to pulling off unexpected overtaking moves…

I see Team Lotus moving up into the think of the midfield, based on the proven package of a Renault engine-Red Bull transmission and the fact that Jean-Claude Migeot’s aerodynamic companies in Italy do know what they are doing…

I am not really sure what to make of Lotus Renault GP. I have a lot of time for the team itself. There are a lot of very good people there, and Eric Boullier is a racer, but I have yet to be convinced that the new owners have the substance to make the team a success. It is all really rather messy.

I am curious to see how things develop too for Scuderia Toro Rosso. I keep hearing that the team is for sale and I must say that this makes sense. Its only value to Red Bull is as a place to train drivers, but it would be a lot cheaper to simply give them the money to buy drives elsewhere… The team seems to be doing a pretty decent job given the restrictions it faces in terms of budget and infrastructure.

The Virgin team is also a source of interest. Will the team move up through the field using only Computational Fluid Dynamics in the design process, or will that gamble be proved to be a leap too far? It will be fascinating to see what others teams do if Virgin is suddenly in the midfield, as it will mean that an awful lot of business plans will need to be reworked… That is actually a good thing because it could turn F1 racing into a world in which teams can make profits, rather than the sport having to rely on wealthy individuals like Mateschitz, Mallya and the like.

As to HRT, I am fascinated to know how the Spanish owners think they are going to save the day when it is already too late to be starting on the design process. I can only hope that someone smart has started to invest in design work in the knowledge that in a while the Spanish will find out that it is all too late and will then realize that their F1 entry is worthless without having a car… The man with a car design will at that point, be the person able to dictate terms…

So it is winter full of questions, which is what makes this sport such a wonderful activity. It is not just about the racing, it is about the whole scene, an entire industry.

“It is not just about the racing, it is about the whole scene, an entire industry.

Endlessly fascinating…”

Agree.

That is in a way where the bug lies, with Formula 1…a lot of the time the racing itself does not necessarily merit the devotion a lot of fans have for the sport, even if it is/was mildly diverting/entertaining. It is about the whole package, in the way you describe it. It is the way the entire sport descends on one given place once a fortnight or so. It gives the sport a tremendous focus that it is hard to see in other popular sports.

Jonathan Legard is not the most popular person within the confines of the internet, but his quote “the sport which never sleeps, the story which never stops” resonates particularly well with me.

From the crazy idea department:
Why don’t IBM enter as title sponsor for some team, Sauber for example? They certainly have a good trademark/product name they can use, Lotus Softwarehttp://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/
🙂

I completely agree Joe and I think it’s why so many non F1 fan don’t understand why we “watch cars go round and round in circles”.
It is because of the politics and almost unseen wrangles going on, and the evolutions over time, I mean Stewart GP won a race within 3 years and now “that” team has just done the double, some 12 years later after all the permutations it has been.

You never know, maybe Eddie Jordan will be, one day years from now, swanning down the pit lane saying how “his” team has just done the double despite 12 incarnations in-between ownership.

It’s the things behind the racing that is just as interesting as the racing (Bernie & Hublot!!??)

Once the Lotus debacle is sorted out I think the most interest will be the Virgin/HRT situations.

Regarding the CFD only route, earlier in the year on Five Live, Anthony Davidson was asked how Virgin’s route compared to the other teams, given that they split their efforts between CFD and tunnel, whilst Virgin is 100% CFD.

Anthony gave a brilliant answer. He pointed out that the question should be how does the value of the 100% weigh against the other teams spend, because Mercedes already spends more on CFD than Virgin – and still does wind tunnel work on top of that. So I can’t see Virgin catching up any-time soon unless they stumble upon a Double Diffuser or F-Duct rivalling innovation.

I’m being charitable about HRT though, when I say I think there is a plan by Colin Kolles and Geoff Willis to make the team somehow competitive but the people funding it have no idea what is needed from them. That said you’d hope Kolles and Willis have seen the signs….

As for Toro Rosso, I’ve said it before but I think VW should buy it, rename it Lamborghini with engines designed by Porsche and build it up, so it’s not the Ferrari Training ground it is at the moment and it becomes a place where drivers and engineers aspire to be rather than the place they want to start at.

Thanks for whetting my appetite Joe. I am looking forward to the new season.

For reasons I won’t bore you with I have been an armchair F1 fan for a few years. However, in 2011 I plan to go to a couple of races (Silverstone & Nurburgring). I’m also planning a two week holiday in Spain in February and hope to visit Jerez (haven’t been there since 1986) and Valencia (never been there) for the F1 tests.

If anyone has any advice or information on going to the tests I’d be most interested to hear it.

I’ve heard there is a nominal charge to get in but there is nothing on the circuit websites as yet. Are they massively attended? Is there any access to the teams or drivers (like a paddock walk or some such – or am I naive hoping for that?)

I’m also looking forward to the re-introduction of KERS. I think Williams may be one to watch as I heard they have a good system.

Red Bull always seem to find something that the other teams don’t as do Mclaren. The only difference is Red Bull tied it all together (blown diffuser) with a winning car where as Mclaren did ok (F Duct) but didn’t have the car to win outright from it.
Ferrari on the other hand don’t seem to get involved with the party much at all. Instead picking up developments like blown diffusers, and F Ducts at around the same time as the midfield teams do.

Re the archive, my tuppenceworth. I’m working my way through it and I tend to skip just to the colour pieces and features, rather than the race reports and certainly not the quali or the now out-of-date news.

How easy would it be for you to reformat and repackage the less obsolete content into features specials – they may be a more marketable option than magazines which are perceived to be out of date?

Just seen this week’s Autosport cover. Would like your take on it. Just sent them the following missive:

Very bizarre.

If Group is the ‘real Lotus’, then they aren’t back, as they’ve never been in F1 before (pre 2010 licence to 1Malaysia).

Similarly, 2010’s Lotus Racing, was just a licence from Group, and as such the same headline could not be made then.

The new 2011 entry list with Team Lotus, would warrant ‘the real Lotus is back’ however.

While the halt of Group Lotus licence to 1Malaysia, and the acquisition of Renault, would warrant ‘the other Lotus is back’ if we were to consider that they’d gone post Abu Dhabi, pre the recent announcement.

Was it just a poor picture choice tho? Cos the real Lotus, Team Lotus, is indeed back, but the picture you’ve put on the cover is a Renault.

clearly there was no car development at HRT during the year after falling out with their chassis builder dallara. so are they going it alone now – and with what resources? the way things have gone, i can see them arriving in bahrain next year with the 2010 car simply adapted to use the williams gearbox.

Thanks for another interesting post, Joe. As you suggest, it is often the bits between races that are the most interesting in Formula 1. Me and my father used to look forward to Murray Walker’s pre-race updates on the most recent gossip and deals almost as much as the races, back in the day. There was always some wild story doing the rounds, or some disagreement between the authorities and the teams, or some spat between drivers. Never a dull moment.

My girlfriend, of course, doesn’t get this at all, and just thinks it’s cars going round in circles. *Rolls eyes.*

My favourite place name was a village with the splendid name of Bradfield Combust, which was near where I grew up in Suffolk.

On top of that egregious lickspittling cover, Autosport are referring to Renault as “Lotus Renault”, too. Must just be a sub’s mistake that we aren’t seeing references to Vodaphone McLaren and Ferrari Marlboro…

Just read Dany Bahar’s comments on another F1 website and I have to say they rather make sense, from a twisted corporate mind sort of way. He says they are just fine with four “Lotus” cars on the grid (the more the merrier, etc.) which makes sense from his marketing/brand awareness standpoint, and that his money guys felt the Renault team would be further up the grid than Fernandes and so decided to spend their money in that direction rather than support a “start-up” team. While I still hope that Bahar fails miserably and Fernandes ends up owning everything with Lotus written on it, his comments at least shed some light on his and his investors thought process.

My recollection of lotus since I became an F1 fan is the mika hakkinen/zanardi/pedro lamy death throes of the early 90s.

I missed the heyday and the Mansell / Senna eras.

On the one hand TF has brought the brand back to F1 with integrity and in a proper manner.

On the other hand, he licenced the brand for a year, whereas Proton have run the Lotus cars brand for over a decade.

On the other (whoa there, that’s three) hand, TF has bought the Team Lotus brand.

Who is the REAL Lotus. I don’t know. Someone beat me to it in another blog ( I think) saying that IBM software company Lotus should sponsor a team and run the Red/Gold Leaf colours or the Camel yellow…

The amount of gold on the “whatever it’s called” – Renault looks awfully pudgy. It wasn’t like that back in the days of Lotus 72, 76, 77, 78, 79.

Who remembers Dave Brodie’s ‘Run Baby Run’ Escort? John Player appeared to copy his car for their JPS livery, I used to get a lot of flack from managers at work (Imperial Tobacco) for mentioning that!!

The British motoring press seem to have a strange relationship with the people who make Lotus road cars.

When they praised the qualities and specification of the first Elises in thier road tests a pal bought one.

He took it to the track and discovered it was a pile of poo. I have seen many a spotty IT contactor with a glum look on his face after his pride and joy oversteered him into some armco.

My pal also put his Elise on a weighbridge and found it weighed significantly more than was being claimed.

He wrote many letters to that magazine complaining that they were publishing round ones(not Autosport by the way) and eventually got a rather grudging apology. I think they may have printed it as well.

Regarding Volkswagen and F1, Motorsport Aktuell ran a story a couple of weeks ago that stated Red Bull Racing were considering buying engines from them in the future, in a deal similar to TAG-Porsche in the 80’s. The story had a comment by Mateschitz to verify the intent.

Great place names, they put a smile on my face at the end of a bleak Thursday! I had the pleasure of growing up a couple of miles from the lovely Hamlet of Sexhow in North Yorkshire.

Thanks for keeping a great blog Joe. It’s great to get such lucid, in depth comment from someone with such knowledge but in a relatively informal format. Since I started taking a few minutes out to read it during the day my boss has given me two pay rises, so in the last couple of weeks I’ve convinced myself to cut loose and put a GP+ subscription on my list of things to do when I sit down at the weekend. That’s got to be worth a promotion in the new year.

What a great vision Onion Soup, an open hearth and a whiskey mac…you are selling a brochure image of winter there…can I come?

Seriously though, looking forward to next year and I too look forward to many of your questions including the CFD. In theory its possible as some of the most complicated modern machinery has been designed that way, Lockheed Martin F22 Raptor, Joint Strike Fighter and Airbus A380 amongst others. But thats done on a massively larger budget with years of honing the software etc. BUT I am pretty sure there is a place for it now in modern F1.

(from The Times and F1 Fanatic website)
“Nelson Piquet Jnr has broken his silence over the conspiracy to cause a crash in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

In an interview with The Times the team’s former driver explained how Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds devised the idea to help Fernando Alonso win the race.

Piquet said: I could see they were nervous. The room was hot and very tense. I was quite surprised because Flavio is a very assured guy and I had not seen him like that.

“Symonds started talking first. ‘Look, both cars are at the back of the grid,” he told me. “We are in a situation where we are not going to get anywhere in this race unless something extraordinary happens.”

Flavio agreed with him. “It would be a disaster for the team unless something extraordinary happened.”

I just sat there listening because I couldn’t figure out where this was going. They were both very fidgety and the situation was incredibly tense. I don’t think I had said a word by this point.

It was only after five minutes that Flavio made his pitch. ‘Look, the only way we can benefit in any way out here is by getting a safety car on the course at the right moment,’ he said.

I just sat there, looking at them. They both reminded me of what had happened in Germany when someone [Timo Glock] had crashed just after I had pitted and I came second in the race. ‘Do you want to help the team?’ Flavio said. ‘If you crash at the right moment, it could change everything.

Nelson Piquet Jnr: “I did not even consider the morality of it.”

Is this F1’s own Wikileaks? I can’t believe it that Briatore and Symonds can possibly still be invited to attend F1 events after this, nor how Fernando Alonso has the gall to call his 2008 Singapore GP ‘win’ a victory.
Cheats must be banned and results gained by cheating be removed from all records – if a sport is to be taken seriously.

Volkswagen Group step in to fund HRT, with a title sponsorship deal. In return, they get a two-year option to buy the team. HRT races next year in a yellow/red Spanish livery as SEAT Hispania Racing, using the Dallara chassis (Dallara build the chassis for the Audi Le Mans cars) and the Cosworth engine. It’s actually a pity that Audi sold Cosworth Engineering to Mahle because it would have been serendipitous to be able to stick a Cosworth badge on sporty SEATs, while the F1 team races with Cosworth engines.

(Another scenario would be for VW to acquire Toyota’s Germany-based F1 operation but Toyota seem to be quite happy with how Toyota Motorsport is doing so that seems unlikely.)

Then, in 2013 (assuming VW Group take up the option to buy the team) they switch to an in-house designed/built 1.6L v4 engine.

Why SEAT? Because that brand wouldn’t suffer or be degraded from being at the back of the grid, unlike Audi/Porsche. Also, it’s a Spanish brand (and is promoted internationally as such) so sits well with the Hispania team name.

You could even retain the SEAT brand after 2013 – nothing necessarily wrong with a SEAT-Porsche – but VW’s stated intent was to use the Audi or Porsche brand so they’re likely to want to switch to one of those. Probably Audi, as Porsche are known for their flat-six engines, whereas all Audi have to do is lift a couple of 1.6L I4 engines off the A3 assembly line and stick turbochargers on them.😉

If, however, at some point between now and the end of 2012, VW Group decide that they DON’T want to enter F1 after all, they can simply not take up the option to buy the team.

PS: Another attractive thing about HRT is that it’s effectively a virtual team – they have a slot on the grid but, unlike STR or Sauber, they don’t have a sizeable factory/base in Italy or Swizerland which would be disadvantageous in the event that you wanted to relocate the team to, say, Ingolstadt (where Audi’s Le Mans operation is based), or Weissach (where Porsche have recently – i.e. less than three weeks ago – announced they’ll be building a wind tunnel).

Fascinating reading about HRT today, up for sale then not according to HRT, wouldn’t it be better for Epsilon Euskadi to but the entry and run with the entry, they have the background in motor sport along with the facilities?

Thinking that HRT, aside from having drivers and a crew may turn out to be the USF1 of the 2011 season.
Love the speculation regarding VW Group and its potential venues for entry into F1.
One question, Was Toyota’s team a straight up new team or did it build on a pre-existing team, I know that Honda essentially took over BAR, both had less than stellar returns on their investment, but after Renault, McLaren, Ferrari, those Japanese Motor company teams were in the same range as Williams, and Sauber/BMW through much of the last decade, occasions glimpses of success, but generally mid pack.
It seems as though Williams, Sauber, and Toro Rosso seem to be the best options for VW in order of likely successes.
It’s amazing how many different options for labeling that VW could use, and they definitely seem to have some excellent engineering and racing talent from what they have done with the Audi LeMans program, wondering if they are willing to go down that path.

The Lotus thing seems to be nuts, but think it’d be cool to have Malaysian F1 keep the Lotus name and the green car while Renault-lotus have JPS paint scheme, just so long as we don’t get the senna yellow/camel f1 lotus.

Got to join in the cries of foul play regarding the current issue of the Autosport mag. You have to assume that there’s something in it financially for the magazine/publisher. The amazingly pro-Group Lotus bias doesn’t even seem to fit in with the opinions of Autosport’s regular F1 reporters that have a presence on Twitter. One of the most puzzling aspects of their 4 page report is a picture of the 1994 Team Lotus car at Adelaide with the caption “Lotus Cars bowed out of F1 at the end of ’94”! Erm, not Team Lotus then…?

I am a Autosport subscriber, luckily not for their F1 coverage (which I normally skim read), but for their coverage of other series and national racing, which has been pretty good since they last redesigned the mag. Unfortunately though, this Group Lotus propaganda has made me seriously consider not renewing my subscription.

By the way, I’m still hoping that STR become Alfa Romeo, though it sounds like di Montezemolo has got other things on his mind!